Is the worm turning?

There is a piece on today's BBC website in which Tony Blair, Britain's former Prime Minister, admits that his Christian faith is hugely important to him, that when traveling he always sought a church in which to worship on Sundays, but that he kept quiet about it when he was in office because people might think him "a nutter." The program in which he says this is to be aired later this evening, and if I can stay awake until then, I will watch it!

In that one comment Blair summed up the way the British have been enculturated over several generations to assume that a forthright affirmation of Christian faith by anyone, whether they have influence or not, is a somewhat screw loose kind of thing. Richard Dawkins, whose book about God's apparent non-existence was ironically on the Christmas-buys shelf at Borders in Cambridge the other day when I was in there, plugs into that mentality and represents it at the elite end of the spectrum.

This notion that Britain and Europe have shed every last vestige of their Christian heritage is accepted all over the place as the right way of interpreting the facts, but I would suggest that folks should be a little more cautious before drawing such conclusions.

When I was meeting in London this last week, a contact close to the hub of things, told me that actually there are now more churchgoers in the Cabinet that an any time in probably more than a century. While that doesn't prove anything it is certainly worth pondering. In addition, there is regular creative contact between 10 Downing Street and Lambeth Palace, just across the River Thames, and it ought to be remembered that the present Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is a Preacher's Kid who affirms many of the lessons he learned growing up in a Presbyterian manse.

It isn't only in secular Britain that this is happening. When I made my one trip to Australia more than twenty years ago there was a book going the rounds at that time entitled, "Can God Survive in Australia?" With the phenomenon of churches like Hillsong, it is clear that God is surviving, and now the Australians have elected a Prime Minister who makes no secret of his Christian profession. Is the worm turning, and could such a thing happen in other places in the secularized West?

The United States is unique in the openness of its prominent leaders to faith, but most of the rest of the western world is embarrassed when Presidents, senators, members of Congress, or governors talk freely about such things. The chattering classes here see such overt religiosity as gauche, naive, simplistic, reflecting an unthinking childishness that is altogether irrelevant in today's complex and increasingly troublesome world. They wonder what is wrong with such people, which illustrates the anxieties of Tony Blair, and his concern to his faith be under wraps for fear that he would be considered weak in the head -- and therefore unfit to govern.

Meanwhile, if the statistics are to be taken seriously Christian (and Jewish) religious observance in Britain continues to bump along the bottom. The question is how should such figures be interpreted, and should they be allowed to stand alone without prodding or questions being asked of them? Could it be that higher levels of Christian observance by those in political leadership here and elsewhere in the world are merely straws in the wind of something larger that is happening, or are they mere coincidences that mean little? Perhaps it is too soon to answer such a question, but a few years hence we may have a better perspective on a whole array of realities -- and this could suggest that it is the line pushed by the popular media that is amiss.

I have been guilty of over-optimism regarding all sorts of issues and concerns in the past, so it is necessary to keep that side of myself in check. However, as I re-acclimate to the British environment there are other factors that I see. Certainly, there is an undercurrent of distrust of organized religion, but I find myself asking fundamental questions about whether this means that faith itself has been flushed down the toilet.

One of the things that has impressed me is the potential long-term impact of Alpha. While well over two million people have attended an Alpha Course in the UK since 1993, and while Alpha may not be growing as fast as perhaps it once was, there is certainly no evidence of it fading away. Living and working as I do in the heart of one of Britain's healthiest theological colleges there is plenty of evidence that we are seeing some of the fruit of Alpha coming through our doors.

Just as in earlier generations there was a bubble of candidates seeking ordination several years after a Billy Graham Crusade had been held in Britain (some of my contemporaries at seminary came to Christ through Graham), today there is this steady surge coming from the ranks of those whose lives have been touched by Christ through Alpha. Last year, for example, and no one seems to have a clear explanation for it, there was a significant and unexpected increase in those seeking ordination.

A quarter of the British population knows about Alpha, and one person in thirty has attended Alpha, which would suggest that something has to be going on -- and will continue for a while. When I was first ordained the Diocese of London was the fastest shrinking when it came to church attendance, now it is seeing healthy growth in membership and average Sunday attendance. Alpha seems to have been one of the causes of this, together with a diocesan bishop who is willing to think strategically and use tools like Alpha to improve the health of his diocese.

If Alpha is a work of God, then we can expect some kind of long-term impact in altered lives, enriched families, and strengthened moral values. It takes only a relatively small critical mass to experience a transforming faith for that to filter through into wider society. I am not suggesting that Alpha is the one and only reason for spiritual advance, but it is certainly evidence that something is going on, which belies a wooden interpretation of the statistics which might lead us to think God is permanently on the back burner in Britain.

I suspect that Alpha has received the kind of response that it has because of a lot more than clever marketing and Nicky Gumbel's way with words and winning smile. I suspect that Alpha is one of several things that has touched a deep chord of longing in the British heart and psyche. In America, especially the American South, there is a general assumption within the wider culture that life is about a lot more than being a consumer, but that assumption is nowhere near as strong here. This leaves people fishing around for something more.

In Britain you see people living from one self-indulgence to the next. Right now it is Jingle Bells time, but as soon as that is over the television will be shouting to people to start booking their holidays -- a time when sun-starved Brits can turn themselves into sweaty lobsters in Florida, the Mediterranean, or some more exotic spot, convincing themselves that they are having lots and lots of fun, and this is what life is about. And so the cycle continues. I sense that a small but growing number are stopping and asking themselves whether life is about more than this. It only takes so many to do so before the pendulum starts swinging.

Furthermore, I have also found myself in conversations about the Christian faith since being here, where ordinary secular folks are trying to make sense of it in light of the Islam that they see around them. I don't think many native British people find Islam particularly attractive, but I sense that although it is hidden at the moment there are growing numbers asking how Christ stacks up when compared to Mohammad. Such popular comparative religion is probably at an early stages, but I sense we will hear more about it in the years to come.

Then there is this other fascinating phenomenon of Christian in-migration to the UK. We hear an awful lot about Muslims flocking here, as they are, but it could very well be that even more overt Christians are finding their way to these shores. 600,000-700,000 Poles have revitalized the Roman Catholic church in this land, and many of those who have come from Africa or Asia are themselves strongly committed to the Lord Jesus Christ. While the ethnic variety of Britain is far greater than it was thirty years ago when I left this country, within this new diversity are followers of Christ who in the years to come will have a lot to say and do here.

Maybe I am a Pollyanna, but maybe also a worm is turning. Certainly, it can no longer be assumed that Europe is speeding inexorably down a secular highway, although the voice of those who have no religious belief will be loud and strong. Neither can it be assumed that Christianity has lost all its dynamic and spine in the face of secularism and other faiths moving onto its turf. Something seems to be happening here. The Christian church has been written off far too many times in the past and then has popped back for me to want to do such a thing now.

Culture of Possibility or Culture of Scarcity?

Portrait of Handley Moule, First Principal of Ridley Hall and later Bishop of Durham. This hangs in the Ridley dining hall

Since the beginning of September I have been attempting to get under the skin of the institution within which I now minister so that I can serve it better. I have wanted to know where it came from, what makes it tick, what is its institutional DNA, and so forth. I guess that as I have been discovering things I have been asking a lot of why questions.

I struggle for words because it is hard to describe what it is like to return to your homeland as a stranger. While much that is going on around you is very familiar, you see it through very different eyes and ask some startlingly different questions of the reality. This is what has been happening to me as I have dug into getting to grips with Ridley Hall. From this has come a whole series of interesting thoughts about the nature of Britain itself since the latter part of Victoria's reign.

Ridley is the result of a huge surge of self-confidence and generosity in this country in the 1870s and 1880s. Given the spiritual awakening that had occurred a generation earlier I would have to suggest that it was probably part of the knock-on effect of that. One of the things I learned from the great missionary statesman, Max Warren, was that we should never disconnect actions that demonstrate the advance of the Gospel from God's initiative -- especially those initiatives that had an extraordinary focus and intensity like awakenings, renewals, revivals.

Neither was Ridley Hall the only thing that happened during this period. Essentially the same networks of people were establishing and Wycliffe Hall in Oxford, simultaneously, and colossal sums of money were raised not only for these two ventures but all sorts of other godly activities, social care, public education, and so on, and so on.

Britain was at that time riding high in the world, and while some of that confidence was the product of Gospel incentive and its accompanying empowerment, some was the outcome of the wealth and influence that had been accumulating. A can-do mentality seemed to prevail, and in the years that followed Ridley's founding, for example, significant amounts of money by the standard of any age were raised to enlarge and improve the college's facilities.

Everywhere you look in Britain you find buildings and institutions from that time. Great investments were being made in what was believed to be the nation's robust future, and it was often the Christian faith that was a major driving force behind this movement. But that era of philanthropy and expansiveness evaporated within a few decades. I have little doubt that there was some kind of relationship between the ebbing of generosity and the ebbing of the Christian faith.

The Twentieth Century was also a period during which Britain received what might be described as a treble whammy. It began with World War One which, as we have been hearing today, Remembrance Sunday, decimated the flower of a generation. The brightest and best of British, French, German, and other nations' manhood gave their lives in the bloodbath that was the Western Front. It is impossible to assess just how much spiritual and psychological damage that war did to the capacity of the nations involved to think well of themselves.

There followed first the Great Depression and then a mere twenty years after the first World War had ended a second, the war in which my father fought -- and many of his contemporaries died. Winston Churchill knew as he entered that conflict for what he described as "Christian civilization," that even if Britain was on the winning side it would be impoverished. By 1945, the year in which I was born, there were few fortunes left to fund philanthropy, and the church itself had been deeply wounded by the course of events together with its own loss of spiritual and theological nerve.

During World War Two the government had taken control of almost every aspect of life so that everything possible could be directed at the business of winning the conflict against Hitler and his dreams of world domination. When the war ended that sense of the government being the one who gathered and then divided out the goodies was embedded in the national psyche. It didn't help that the nation was penniless, its empire was dribbling away, and the people were weary from the slog that the Twentieth Century had to that point been to them.

It was sometime during that first half of the last century that the culture of possibility which had accompanied plenty gave way to a culture of scarcity which would rather fight to protect just a tiny portion of what it already had, rather than losing everything altogether. The habits of such a dependent culture do not disappear readily, and Brits are still far readier, even if they constantly moan about it, to allow the state to eavesdrop and intrude upon its life than is healthy. This is one of the areas where I realize how differently I now see things than when I first left these shores.

Yet Britain has little excuse these days to plead poverty and continue hiding from the challenges by wallowing in this culture of scarcity. This is a wealthy country, one of the richest in the world. While there are certainly pockets of need and disadvantage (some of them quite large), the vast majority of the population are more prosperous than ever before: why else would a large portion of the European population and half of Africa and Asia want to migrate here?

Something that is required now is for a larger portion of the British to relearn the grace of possibility-thinking, and the philanthropy that goes with it. Christians need to learn it just as much as the general population, and I wonder whether part of the weakness of the faith here is that we still tend to give God a tip rather than at least a tithe. That is not to say that money would solve all the problems, but didn't someone once say that where our treasure is, there will our heart be also?

I have been wondering (my line of thought following a suggestion in Philip Jenkins' book, God's Continent, that I reviewed a couple of months ago), whether the arrival of a dynamic Islam on these shores might actually be a blessing in disguise because its presence forces the native population to think seriously about God, faith, morals, values, and so forth. What a challenge for the Gospel Britain is today. We here could well be on the front line of something big. The question is will we rise to the challenge?

What is required is a vision and an imagination that is huge, as big as the Lord God himself. Such a vision and imagination would has such Kingdom implications that we would all stand back in amazement and astonishment.

Why the American Church crisis is not front and center

St. Andrew's Church, Impington, where I am worshiping

Watching the goings on in the American church from a distance of 3,000 miles, is an eerie, almost out-of-body experience. It is like sitting on the window sill and looking across at the being you once inhabited while a melee of people work on it, and you are not quite sure which ones are doing the healing and which ones are doing the ripping apart!

What is more intriguing and a little disconcerting is that apart from a few enthusiasts, ecclesiastical events on the landmass that sits between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans do not seem to be high on most lists of priorities here in Britain.

Part of me understands that response, because when I log into various of the blogs and read the pronouncements of bishops or the Episcopal News Service, the bit of me that is getting absorbed back into the English church and the new ministry before me is distancing from the crisis in an attempt to protect myself from the on-going pain. The other part of me, the part that is still a priest of the Diocese of Tennessee, rings my hands, prays, gets anxious about what is going on and how people I love are being treated (or hurt); but most of this I have to do in private -- because there is an entirely different set of agendas and priorities here.

Now, I confess, that I have not traveled much out of Cambridge since arriving here, so my insights are limited to the sliver of opinion in the little bubble in which I function, but the world in which I live is pretty engaged with broader circumstances so what is happening here is probably not much different from what is happening in a lot of other places. Everyone knows that things are not easy in the American or Canadian churches, but either they have a different set of pressing concerns, or they don't want to know about it. Although I haven't heard it said, I suspect some are shaking heads and a muttering to themselves something about those crazy Americans.

Yet, I suspect there is more going on beneath the surface than just this. In Britain there is now this huge sense that the Christian perspective on things is very much a minority taste that should be neither seen nor heard. Regarding the tussle to shape postmodern culture, a relativistic utilitarian approach to living and decision-making prevails, and attitudes which are rooted in an omnipotent God who has revealed himself are often condemned as irrelevant, intolerant, or both.

Nevertheless, in many hearts there is this yearning, and people find it difficult to put their finger on it. Yesterday afternoon I was talking to a totally unchurched family whose daughter had completed some graduate studies, and the graduation ceremony had taken place a few days earlier in the cathedral of the city where she had been studying. There was, it seemed, something about the building, the prayer, the graduation exercises, that had grabbed at the soul and heartstrings of these folks: they were aware of their need for the transcendent, but did not have the language with which to express it.

Thus it is that the Church of England and others are concentrating increasing amounts of attention on how to reach the unreached: folks who are three, four, five, or more generations removed from any kind of faith expression or church involvement. There are now folks in my own extended family who are four or five generations removed from any kind of Christian profession or church membership. What the Christian gospel is about is a mystery to the vast majority of the British (and I would have to add broader European) native population.

I suspect that what people like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens are doing in their best-selling frontal attacks on belief in God is both shaping public attitudes as well as amplifying the prevailing popular mindset. One American Christian visiting here that I was talking to the other day was describing a very interesting conversation with a taxi driver in which he expressed many of the same opinions as Professor Dawkins, although he had probably never heard of him. The general drift of his argument was that "no one believes that stuff any longer," something that is eagerly reflected back to folks through the media.

Thus the challenge before the churches is huge. Just how do you coax people into a relationship with the believing community when a large part of it either seems totally inept, or might affirm ideas and values that the popular culture either does not understand or sees as petty and narrow-minded. My own commitment to biblical Christian values has already been roundly condemned as such by some of my nearest and dearest, even though I have overtly said very little.

Last Sunday evening I attended the village church to which I have chosen to attach myself and delighted in the office of Evening Prayer, together with eleven others. As one who has spent his whole adult life hanging around the church and soaking up the liturgy, it was a joy to be part of that act of worship, however, what we were doing in that ancient building would not have made much sense to the vast majority in the homes that cluster around St. Andrew's Church. To them this was about as relevant to daily life as the strange secret ceremonies of the Freemasons.

It isn't that there aren't gifted and godly people attempting to find the way to bring Christ into the lives of the unchurched population of this land. To my delight I have been discovering some of the most committed and creative people imaginable who are seeking to respond to today's challenge, but there are few parts of England where the seed when planted sprouts forth thirty, fifty, a hundredfold. In most places the going is much tougher than that, and apart from this wistfulness that there must be something more to existence than this, there is little evidence of the spiritual tide turning.

Thus, the goings on in the United States are not going to be on the front burner. What is happening in America is a bit of static, there in the background, irritating, but like someone else's civil war of which we here are spectators. It is almost as if the English church is saying, "We're sorry, we have bigger fish to fry."

Yet when one part of the Body is troubled there is no way that another part can responsibly wash its hands of the problems. If you were to ask me what is the biggest problem facing the English church at this time, it is that in so many ways it has taken on the relativistic utilitarianism that prevails in so much British thinking. Thus, instead of expressing conviction and living it out, it shrugs its shoulders and says we must be tolerant, committed to diversity, non-judgmental, living and letting live. While some of this may be admirable, it should not take place at the expense of biblical standards and values, however unpopular they might be in the prevailing culture.

Falling into the Sub-Prime Pit

It would appear that the Kews have fallen into the pit created by the sub-prime mortgage crisis, the consequent slowing of the economy, and the slump in the housing market. Other than a nibble or two, very little interest has been shown in our house in Tennessee by potential buyers, and with winter coming on this is not the time of the year when people traditionally spend a lot of time and effort trying to find a new roof to put over their heads. We aren't alone, tens of thousands of sellers are in the same boat even in fast-growing counties like ours.

Meanwhile, within the next ten day we complete the purchase of a house here in England, and face the prospect of two mortgages to pay every month for a while. I don't like the idea at all, but there is little I can do about it. I had lunch with an old friend the other day who was caught in the same bind of owning two houses for several years in the recession of fifteen years or so ago -- something I hope and pray does not happen to us!

It seems only yesterday that folks were saying that there should be no reason at all why people wouldn't snap up our home in Williamson County, Tennessee, set as it is overlooking a beautiful view that will never be spoiled by building, a home that is energy smart, beautifully finished, and has been a delight and joy to ourselves. But that was before we found ourselves on the receiving end of a financial crisis that has been partly triggered by a major failure on the part of the banking system when it comes to making loans to families wanting a home of their own.

The tragedy of this whole banking crisis is that so many who aspired to the American dream of their own rather than a rented roof have now lost what they yearned for in the downward spiral that has taken place. I suspect we will be able to find our way financially through the impact of this crisis upon ourselves although will lose quite a lot as a result, but others have had their lives ruined for years to come, sometimes as a result of their own collusion with the less-than-honest practices of the mortgage companies.

I love my solar home in Tennessee, and so does Rosemary, my wife, and we built it in an effort to be environmentally responsible. We love it so much that we want to pass it on as a trust to some other family who will take care of it and use it to make the point that there are ways of living comfortably but having a minimal impact upon the world's climate.

If God had not called us to the new work which I am now doing in Cambridge, England, there is no way in the world that we would have left this house so soon. But following God's clear leading sometimes means making painful sacrifices, and that is what we are in the process of doing. The problem is that the sacrifice is now even more painful than we had anticipated.

What has happened in the USA regarding sub-prime mortgages, their packaging, and their selling on to other lenders, is now having an impact here in Britain. This crisis is truly global. Last month I saw the very first bank run of my life, when thousands lined up outside offices of the once much-respected British bank, Northern Rock, to retrieve savings which they thought they might lose. Watching the line snaking along the street in Cambridge was like seeing live the run on the family savings and loan in the Jimmy Stewart classic, "Its A Wonderful Life."

Then there was the news this week that over 65% of mortgage applications were turned down in this country last month -- which is one reason, I think, why my bank has been dragging its feet, and turning over every stone before issuing the loan that I need here. In these last couple of months I have learned a lot about the knock on effect of sin, and the disappointment of seeing something that is precious to me waiting forlornly for a new owner.

Thoughts on Transitions and Change

The other afternoon I grabbed a book off my shelf and headed round the corner to an old-fashioned barber's shop to get my first haircut since arriving in Cambridge. They don't take appointments, you just have to sit until it is your turn to be shorn, so I needed something to while the waiting time away. The book I picked up was William Bridges' Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change.

This is a book I have read several times before, as well as dipping into from time to time because the writer understands transitions, my life has been shaped by a series of difficult transitions, and I have not always navigated them well. Indeed, I think that I have developed this abiding interest in the future because I sometimes transition so badly that I have hoped it would give me a leg up, as it were! As I flipped through the pages and looked at my previous underlinings I realized that perhaps I was not as far down the transitional road back into English life as I had thought.

Bridges identifies several stages to a transition, the first being making a good ending of what you have been and what you have been doing. You cannot get on with a constructive transition until you have given decent Christian burial to your past. When you move forward into something new, there are always losses and with those losses come a tangle of emotions, awkward feelings, and ambivalences, all of which require your best attention.

The day after my haircut I received an email from someone who because of the health of a child has had to leave in mid-stream a ministry that he loved in order to be in a place where his kid is going to receive absolutely vital health care. Of course, he and his wife were battered and bewildered by his internal responses to all they found themselves going through. I understand some of those feelings, because that is where part of me is right now. Put simply, I am not yet able to be fully engaged in my ministry in Cambridge because there are still so many factors of my life in Tennessee that, quite honestly, I am finding trouble letting go of.

Individuals, organizations, cultures all have trouble saying farewell to the past and moving on into the kind of neutral zone where they are able to reorient, and which is the beginning of so many elements of growth that can take place when transitioning. Abandoning our past is not the way to healthily handle transition, because abandonment aborts the process of leaving and grieving. To put it crudely, it is a bit like not bothering to go to a parent or sibling's funeral, however much you were at odds with that family member. If we are to make a fresh beginning then it is essential that we manage a good ending to the old.

Transition has the capacity make you into a very different kind of person. Handle it well and you grow, handle it badly and you either stagnate or fester. William Bridges wrote another much more personal book about his own transitions which he sub-titled "embracing life's most difficult moments." The message of this book is loud and clear that if you fail to embrace such moments then it is possible that maturities of which you are capable will pass you by. He echoes the opening words of Moby Dick, where Herman Melville writes about "the damp, drizzly November of my soul." I guess that journeys of transition often feel like this, and it is necessary for us to gird ourselves up and grasp them appropriately.

The transition I am making is not only from the USA to England, but is also from parish ministry to seminary work, from maintaining the life of a congregation to advancing the life of a theological college that has an exciting future. I feel at sea in that I no longer have a congregation, which to me has always been a bit like an extended family to which I belong, but I am in the process of becoming part of a team in the rather intense little communities that seminaries often tend to be. Meanwhile, for the first time in nearly forty years I find myself temporarily living not as part of a couple but a single life - which means I am learning all sorts of interesting things about myself as I wait for my wife to arrive.

In the midst of all that is going on in my own life I am reading a recent history of Ridley Hall, commissioned for the 125th anniversary of the college. The Sixties and Seventies, were a painful period when the whole future of Ridley was up for grabs, and the college struggled to make a difficult transition either into oblivion, or a merger, or into something different. One of the reasons it was so difficult was because these were difficult years for the Christian faith in Britain.

Elements of the mood of that period I recall as if it was yesterday, because it was when I was preparing for and starting out on my ordained life. While our seminary was relatively healthy, when I got into parish life I found myself confronted with all sorts of things I had not been expecting because so much was changing. We had been trained for one kind of ministry, but so much happened during the four years I was in process that by the time I came out a different kind of world was being born. The fabric of the church was being stretched within a context where the fabric of the culture was being radically altered. I am certain that some of my peers have spent their whole ministries with heads buried in the sand trying to ignore what is happening.

The truth is that Ridley Hall came within a whisker of dying in the early Seventies. By God's grace that didn't quite happen, and while reading the story of the college's trials is agony, the story of its rebirth makes fascinating reading. Now, several decades later this is a place of grace that is full to overflowing with men and women eager to serve Christ with heart, soul, mind, and strength in the church. Yet some of the seeds that are blossoming today were planted during that 'near death' experience that took place a couple of generations ago.

The transition that Ridley has made has not been easy, and the veterans here would perhaps agree that there is still a long way to go, but out of that era has come something potentially very beautiful for God. Valuable lessons were learned in those dark years that so far have not been forgotten, and I sense that no one rests on their laurels here. There is something extraordinarily robust about this theological college as it focuses on Christ, his truth, and how these impact the nation and nations during this postmodern time.

Perhaps the lesson to be learned about transitioning is that these periods cannot be forced, any more than a child can be encouraged to be born on its due date! Our lives don't straighten out after a transition for months for any number of reasons, but out of these in-between-times can come great and glorious blessings.

As I flicked the pages of Managing Transitions as I waited for a little boy to finish having his hair cut the other afternoon I rediscovered a quote from the French novelist Andre Gide that rings bells with me: "One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a long time."

I suspect that in the church today we have lost sight of the shore, but if we can accept that we are being led forward under the sovereign hand of God, then in due course and by his grace we will discover new lands.

A Month After Returning to Britain

This picture was taken by the webcam in the market square in Cambridge just a couple of minutes after I had finished writing this (http://www.camplus.co.uk/webcam.htm)

It is now more than a month since I returned to Britain and am already in certain ways reverting to type and complaining vociferously about the weather, as is the habit of all the people of this land. After a long hot dry summer in Tennessee it was at first nice to feel the gentle breezes and little showers, but when the gently breezes turn damp and cold, and the showers keep coming for days on end, it doesn't do a lot for a person's spirits!

Then what is fascinating is to discover the North American sub-culture that exists in a place like Cambridge where there are literally thousands of Americans and Canadians. As we get together with one another each has his or her own very interesting take on the place, recognizing that there is a certain resistance to change here that can be either quaint or infuriating, depending on your mood or your circumstances. This innate conservatism is, I suppose, inevitable in the context of a university and city as deep-rooted as this is, but it contrasts fascinatingly with the rush to change that have taken place in Britain's overall culture during the three decades that I was away, and how this relates to the Christian community.

Cambridge probably has a higher density of churches and active Christians than most other places in the UK, and I am functioning within the context of a Christian community, but despite this fundamental to all thinking seems to be that by its very nature the prevailing culture and Christian faith and values are at odds with one another. So many of the normative responses of the mainstream culture now are those that began to gain credence during the 1960s as part of the counter-culture; in most people's minds here the church and Christian responses to the challenges of our times are dismissed as the product of dessicated minds that live in a cozy backwater.

This is an increasingly common European attitude, and showed itself off significantly when the erstwhile European Union constitution that died at the hands of referenda in France and Netherlands several years ago, baulked at mentioning the Christian heritage of this continent as part of the antecedent forces that have shaped Europe. For the vast majority of the elite, their Christian past embarrasses them, filtering down from and out of the popular culture.

Yet strangely enough, religious news and the activities of such as the Archbishop of Canterbury garner much more coverage than one would expect in a post-Christian, assertively secular environment. Add to this the fact that the Prime Minister of the UK is a son of the parsonage and his predecessor openly professes a Christian faith, and it is easy to see that there are a lot of ambivalences and ambiguities that are still in the process of playing themselves out.

In addition, the lines are drawn very differently than in the USA. Right now there are rumblings of a General Election in Britain in the next few weeks and this was a topic of conversation the other evening in the Roman Catholic theological institute where I am temporarily rooming. I shrugged and said that I was glad I was not registered to vote because I am not sure where I would cast it. One very traditional Catholic woman pushed me and I said that despite a past voting history elsewhere, I found the more family-friendly policies of the Conservative Party rather attractive. She was horrified, walked away from me, and refused to talk to me for the rest of the evening.

The reason for her horror was a visceral perception that the Conservative Party is weak on issues of social justice, the environment, and other concerns that do not ruffle the feathers of traditional people that much in the USA. It hardly seemed worth telling her that in many respects by American standards I am politically rather liberal, I doubt whether she would have believed it. I had always known that there was a much tighter relationship between conservative political attitudes and traditional/conservative religious ones in the USA than is the case in the UK, but this interchange enabled me to see just how far the center of gravity has shifted here in the last generation or two.

Let me go back to the issue of the family, which I think from my observation of life here, is going to be increasingly crucial. There has been a tremendous erosion since 1976. When I left the UK for the States, while traditional notions of family were under pressure, children out of wedlock were still a pretty big no-no and divorce while rising was nowhere near as prevalent as it is now. Neither was co-habiting, or experimental configurations of "familial" relationships involving both sexes and just one. When I go with my daughter and son-in-law to take my granddaughter for a walk in the lovely park behind their home in Birmingham, I would estimate that perhaps as many as 50% of the parents with children in the playgrounds are raising children alone, and many may never have known two parents, certainly two parents married to one another.

Not only that, but relationships are fluid and realities are covered up in the typically post-modern way with words. Whether married or living together or what, people here tend to refer to their significant other as their "partner," a word that can be given all sorts of connotations. I was in a public building the other day engaging with the bureaucracy and saw there waiting in line those who have been badly hurt by such domestic fluidity, listened in on their noisy conversations, and recognized the despair in their faces as they brought their concerns to the various officials in the building. I suspect from what I have read systematically and gathered informally, that these folks are merely the tip of a colossal iceberg.

Suffice it to say that what has for a long time been the norm is no longer the norm, the culture is in uncharted territory, and the outcome of that is right now hard to predict -- and, personally, I do not feel sanguine.

In addition when I take my granddaughter on one of those walks I see the huge impact that immigration from around the world is having on Britain. Unlike the USA, Britain has not been the migrant's destiny to anything like the same degree over the last couple of centuries, until this period since World War Two. As I watch our two-year-old happily jaunting around the swings and slides, she does so in the company of kids from all over Asia, the Caribbean, parts of Africa, and various corners of Europe.

From the dress and style of the parents gathered with them, this means a huge religious variety. Certainly the Muslims are the most prominent, some women with everything but their eyes covered, but there are obviously a lot of Hindus and Sikhs as well. Of the native population it is hard to tell how many would profess a Christian faith of any kind, but from language and behavior it is not difficult to work out those who do not!

What does this mean for the future? At apocalyptic moments I find myself getting quite frightened for the wellbeing of my kids and grandkids, but this observation of a changing reality has certainly fed my praying in the last few weeks. It could be that we are seeing a genuinely multi-cultural Britain emerging from which great richness could flow, but this is not necessarily the case and we are too early in the process to see what the pie being baked will look and taste like.

Whichever way we interpret the changing situation, the challenge before the Christian community is enormous. Functioning in the setting of a theological college (the British for a seminary), what I am seeing on the part of students and teachers alike is an eagerness to confront the issues modern Britain throws in the face of the Kingdom, and not to run away. I came to Ridley knowing that something remarkable was going on here, but what I have discovered has more than met my expectations.

Some weeks ago I was accused by an American detractor of going and burying myself in obscurity in Cambridge, which suggests an unrealistic and romantic notion of what this city is actually about! Indeed, one of the things that I have sensed since being here is that I am now in one of the "hot spots" that is playing a significant role in shaping our world, both in terms of ideas and in terms of technology.

If the Christian faith is to advance in this bracing spiritual and intellectual climate in which it finds itself then it is going to need the brightest and best in leadership, and these leaders, lay and ordained, are going to require the sort of training and resourcing that will enable them to be affect the changes required. I am increasingly certain this is what Ridley Hall is all about, since its foundation and until now.

As I look at the honor roll, as it were, of this place, I keep coming across names that have fought the good fight with great tenacity, skill, grace, and courage. John Stott was an alumnus of this place, but so were many other key leaders, not least John Sentamu, Archbishop of York. Graduates from Ridley literally helped plant the Anglican Communion, and have served God everywhere from the Houses of Commons and the Lords, as well as Britain's industrial jungles, and cities and real jungles in every corner of this planet -- and still do.

The task of a seminary like Ridley Hall is to raise up the next generation to follow in their footsteps, and as I look at the men and women in chapel in the morning, or talk to them over lunch, I find myself wondering which of these is destined for greatness, and how many of them will dig in, get on with the job, and serve Christ with all their heart, mind, and sinew, receiving very little applause for their faithfulness. Because we live in a global culture, a place like this is for the whole world, not just for Britain alone. This is certainly an exciting place to be, and I think that we heard God's call aright when he offered us the chance to be here.

Well, here I am

Granddaughter, Hannah, on her swing

Fiction and reality sometimes collude, and that seems to be happening in my life. Over the last two years I have, with gaps, been steadily working my way through the Patrick O'Brian "Master and Commander" series of books. These novels, set against the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars trace the friendship of a rising British naval officer, Jack Aubrey, and his close friend, Dr. Stephen Maturin, who sails with him as the ship's surgeon.

What makes these stories so fascinating is the developing relationship between the two men, their marriages, their children, their shipmates, even their enemies. Written by O'Brian late in his career, they represent the mature fruit of an author who is a master craftsman, someone who is an acute observer of people. The last book in the series is simply entitled "21." This wasn't what O'Brian intended, but he passed away at the age of 85 leaving 65 pages of typewritten manuscript and a further dozen more of rough draft. We are literally left in the middle of a sentence as Aubrey and Maturin leave the reader's life without any idea of what happens next, how their lives would continue to evolve, and where the tides of time and fortune would take them.

I tell this at such length because that is much how I am feeling at the moment. On September 3 I got onto a plane at Nashville and left behind my old life in Tennessee, arriving here in Cambridge on September 4, and beginning my new life at Ridley Hall on September 5. The threads of the past which had always been so important were suddenly severed, and new threads and relationships needed immediately to be crafted. What made it more difficult was that I left my wife, dog, cat, and home behind, and found myself living in a single room in a Roman Catholic institution just round the corner from the seminary. It was like being back in boarding school!

It was as if I had slipped through a wrinkle in time and been stripped of my identity. Just as I lost my friends, Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, in mid-sentence, so it seems to be in my own life.

One very helpful woman, a retired priest's wife, gave me a several page piece written by a Japanese woman who had spent fifteen years in Britain before returning home, and she was talking about the reverse culture shock she was experiencing. As soon as I read it, it rang bells with me. You come back to your place of origin a very different person from the one that left so many years before, and in reality your home is now the place from which you came. There is grieving that needs to be done, not the least for me over the business of trying to sell our American home which I love dearly.

During my first couple of weeks here there was a strong impulse to break my contract, jump straight on a plane, and go back to Tennessee where we have lived for so long. I miss its climate (Cambridge is already getting awfully damp and cold); I miss its people (I am realizing just how dear some of my friends there actually are); and I miss the familiar word where I knew who I was, what was my place, and how I fitted.

I think I am over that now, helped along by large doses of daughter, granddaughter, and son-in-law, but I recognize that I am still in survival mode in what is, by and large, an alien world and culture. I am getting into my work and discovering just how huge the challenge is, and that is engaging my creative energies, and I must say that I am enjoying that sense of rootedness which is inevitably there in a city as old and significant as Cambridge.

Last Sunday I went church-shopping. I didn't want to be part of one of the big congregations in Cambridge that cater overwhelmingly to students and the young, but I wanted to find somewhere for Rosemary (when she gets here) and myself where we can be part of a loving fellowship and make our contribution to the advance of the Kingdom. I found my way to St. Andrew's Church, Impington, a delightful village on the north side of Cambridge, and next door to the one in which I will soon be living.

After having been part of two congregations in Tennessee, each of which was under 25 years old, I now found myself worshiping in a village whose existence was first recorded in the 10th Century, and whose church is a 14th Century foundation. The congregation of fifty or so was older rather than younger, and there was a faithfulness about the whole thing that I appreciated and found a great blessing. In the coffee hour afterwards I was made to feel more welcome than almost anywhere I have ever gone. I have promised to go back, and I have this funny feeling that this is going to be a place where we could have a part to play. (http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/st.andrews.histon/impmain.htm)

Several people have been asking what's happening to me, so there's my first report. Perhaps in later items I will go into some of the other things that I am adjusting to, one of them being thousands of miles from the maelstrom that is the Episcopal Church, but that's for another time.

The Revd. Dr. Robert D. "Chip" Nix

I learned when I logged on to my email yesterday morning that my friend of thirty-five years, Robert "Chip" Nix was promoted to glory, taken home by the Lord yesterday evening. Chip had been ill for several months fighting cancerous lesions in the brain. I was in the midst of having my haircut on a hot July Saturday when my phone rang and Chip broke his news to me. He said then that it didn't look good.

I had hoped that I would be able to see Chip before leaving the USA for my new work and ministry here in England, but try as I might to arrange a quick visit to Texas, such a thing proved impossible, so I had to make do with phone calls. Actually, I had been planning to call him from England today, but that is now not possible. I continue to wish that somehow I had managed to get to Austin, and share one of the precious days with him.

Chip Nix appeared in my life in the early 1970s when I had just become the assistant at St. Mary Magdalene Church, Stoke Bishop, a leafy suburb of Bristol, England, and he arrived as a seminarian at Trinity Theological College, just a few hundred yards from our church. He was there as part of a triumvirate of young Episcopal evangelicals whose lives had been influenced for Christ by John Guest, then Rector of Chip's home church, St. Stephen's, Sewickley, on the outskirts of Pittsburgh, PA. Chip had a lot of hair in those days, a droopy mustache, and was a Vietnam Vet.

And so our lives became entwined, but I thought when he returned to the US with his newly-acquired English wife, Carol, that this was just about the last I would see of him. I never at that time expected that America would be in my future, but several years after we first met my life took its American turn, and on my first visit I spent a night with the Nixes in their Manhattan apartment when Chip was doing his Episcopal year of studies at General Theological Seminary.

From then on our paths continued to cross. As is often the case in the Episcopal Church spread across a huge continent, we would stay in touch, but there would often be several years between being able to see each other, although we talk on the phone, exchange emails and occasional instant messages.

Chip's ministry, like all of us had its highs and lows. He worked in various corners of the USA in parishes large and small, and there is a trail of lives who have been shaped positively by his ministry. But it has seemed to be that it has been during his latter years that he found a role that so well fitted his extraordinary array of gifts -- that of an interim minister. There are several congregations today who have been profoundly blessed because the Nixes have been there, and Chip has been their rector for a while.

Perhaps the fairest thing that could be said about Chip was that he was someone whose life was devoted to Jesus Christ with passion, and he lived out that discipleship to his very last breath. He was certainly one of the kindest men that I have known, and always had a listening ear and shared good counsel when this friend was struggling or in trouble. We would talk about ministry and its struggles, share titles of books that ought to be read, and would just sometimes shoot the breeze. He prayed for me often, I know, and I prayed for him, and have prayed constantly for him during these last couple of months of his life.

Chip had his weaknesses and shortcomings, which of us doesn't, but if I were to find a way of summing this person up it would be as a man who sought to be mastered by God. He will be sorely missed. He now shares the joy of eternity with the Lord he has served wholeheartedly, and for that we can be glad. Yet he leaves a wife and two daughters who are bereft without him, in addition to those many, many friends that he accumulated.

I am thankful for the privilege of knowing this delightful man, and I pray that he will remain an example to me as someone who I should seek to emulate.

God's Continent - A Review

A Review of Philip Jenkins' book, God's Continent: Christianity, Islam and Europe's Religious Crisis (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007) US$28.00 (Amazon.com $13.00)

I am writing this as I seek to adjust to the fact that after more than three decades my homeland, England, is once again truly my home -- although in many ways I feel a total stranger. I finished reading Philip Jenkins' latest book, God's Continent, as I traveled back to Britain to take up my new position at Ridley Hall, Cambridge, and coming here added urgency to the task. Not only have I worked harder than I might sifting Jenkins' words, but often this has been accompanied by long moments of staring into empty space attempting to grasp the implication of what he has written.

Philip Jenkins, the Welshman who is Distinguished Professor of History and Religious Studies at Penn State, is one of those rare individuals who is capable of digesting huge quantities of information, and from his synthesis of it emerges theses that are calm, considered, and sensible, and sometimes slightly contrarian. There has been an awful lot written and said during recent years about the rise of Islam in secularized Europe, some of it frightening, much of it hysterical, and often seemingly designed more to sell books than to enlighten.
God's Continent comes, therefore, as a delightful relief. Philip Jenkins, instead of fanning flames of anxiety tries to digest the realities as they are on the ground and to put them into some kind of historical perspective. Jenkins sees it as his task to enlighten rather than to terrify, believing that responding to the facts as they can be ascertained is far the best way of proceeding. God's Continent is chock full of facts, while the endnotes suggest many, many more are stored away in the recesses of the author's brain!

As he has gathered these facts Jenkins has obviously asked of them endless questions, and then sought to put them in some kind of perspective. Jenkins sees his task as enlightening rather than terrifying, and builds his case from the facts as they are on the ground. God's Continent is chock full of facts about what Europe is like, how secularism has become so influential in Europe, yet how vibrant are certain strains of Christianity, coupled with the vibrancy of many less mainstream forms of the faith. The other morning I was driving early through the industrial town of Luton (where it happened I had been born), and was surprised to see that one of the huge old movie theatres is now the UK headquarters for what I suspect is an African, Afro-Carribean denomination.

Then there are facts about Islam in Europe, whose dynamic growth in numbers and influence is the unexpected outcome of post-World War Two immigration policies, coupled with the decline in birthrates of the domestic populations. Britain and France, for example, allowed significant immigration of workers from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Algeria, never having thought through the consequences for second, third, and fourth generation descendants of these eager newcomers.

Unlike Britain and France, Germany did not have an empire from which to import people to do the menial jobs, so guest workers were imported from countries such as Turkey, the expectation being that they would return home when their time in Germany was up. This did not happen, and so there is now a growing Turkish and Islamic group within the heart of German culture and society. In the last dozen years or so Europe has woken up to the fact that there is a whole new challenge before it, the nature of which Jenkins spells out using demonstrable facts and circumstances to make his case rather than appealing to emotion and fear to make his point.

First of all he debunks the notion that the Islamic crescent flag is going to flutter in dominance over European skies any time soon -- if ever. The statistics of past, present, and future immigration from the Islamic world, he contends, do not support such a notion. This is not to say that Islam won't be a significant minority in Europe but it radically overstates the case that Westminster Abbey's future is as a mosque or that the fashionable Champs d'Elysee in Paris will be peopled by women wearing head scarves and burkas!

Secondly, he encourages his readers not to write off Christianity so quickly. Yes, its traditional forms and liberal theologies are in trouble, but there is a great deal more to the faith in Europe than that. Many of those immigrants from Africa and Asia are often mistakenly labeled as Muslims when in fact they are Christians, and vibrantly so. Some of the largest congregations in Europe, in fact, are to be found in the minority communities (thus the old Odean theatre in Luton), and don't write off fresh energies in the Catholic or mainstream Protestant churches, coming in flavors and packages like Alpha.

And bear in mind the nature of Christianity, he encourages us, for as it is challenged in what has historically been its home territory there is the likelihood that it will perk up considerably. "Viewed over the centuries, perhaps the best indicator that Christianity is about to expand or revive is a widespread conviction that the religion is doomed or in its last days... nothing drives activists and reformers more powerfully than the sense that their faith is about to perish in their homelands and that they urgently need to make up these losses farther afiled, whether overseas or among the previously neglected lost sheep at home (pages 288-289).

What is clear is that Europe's secular elites, after having dismissed religion as a curiosity for the best part of half a century, are just starting to wake up to the fact that religion is not withering away, but that there are two major religions each with a significant sense of identity in their very own backyard. Yes, Jenkins tells us, as Islam takes root in Europe it is going to be changed by its encounter with modernity, secularity, and being a minority movement in an unsympathetic culture, but this "Islamic Revolution" is not going to change it into the empty and vacuous affair that has so gutted liberal Christianity, which is the elitist model of the way it ought to go.

Philip Jenkins works hard to tease out the various issues that Europeans, whether Christian, Muslim, secular, or something else, have to address in the coming years. These will include issues of sexuality, gender, freedom of speech, censorship, self-censorship, and so forth. Then there is the huge one of Islam being given great freedom to express itself in what has been the Christian heartland, freedoms that are utterly denied Christians in Islam's own heartland, a point brought home strongly to me in a conversation yesterday evening with a student who has come from one of those countries. Saudis, for example, are free to finance a $65 million mosque in Rome, while as one priest puts it, Christians in the Arabian peninsular function in something akin to the catacombs.

Then there is the whole issue of blasphemy, and what can be portrayed on screen, stage, and in the written word. The most significant and legitimate question related to this is whether it is appropriate for Christianity to be openly pilloried, as it often is in Europe, because Christians do not threaten violence and even murder when attacked in this way in a free society. However, society tiptoes around Muslims, censoring itself, because it fears that if treated as Christians are they would resort to violence.

I always feel much better when facts are out because then we can address them, Jenkins
deliberately puts the facts on the table. Some of the facts I personally do not like, some are not as bad as I feared, but all of them are grist for the mill of what is a remarkable book that ought to be taken seriously by thoughtful Christians -- especially any who have a deep concern for the future of Europe. I would add that the thoughtful Muslim would also have much to gain from reading this helpful volume.

That secular Europeans are now asking important questions about their religious heritage is itself an encouragement. That there is an alternative forceful challenge being mounted for people's hearts is something Christians need to take with the utmost seriousness. Perhaps there are signs that this is happening and there could be some very interesting fruit being borne in the days ahead. I cannot help thinking that God's providence is preparing the ground for something that could be very significant as Europe moves forward into the future.

On a personal note, I find myself pondering that maybe... perhaps... God has drawn us back to Europe at just such a time as this, and that the ministry ahead of me is a small part of a bigger Kingdom response to this huge challenge (and opportunity) that will shape the future of Europe, and therefore of the whole world.

After half a lifetime...

It is hard to believe that my time here has almost run out and I am in my final days as a resident of these United States. When I board the plane in Nashville on Labor Day to go to my new ministry in Cambridge, England, almost to the day I will have spent half my life on these shores and half my life in the country of my birth. I have lived, worked, and raised children here, and have for nearly a quarter of a century been a Citizen. The challenge of the Cambridge opportunity is a big one, it came as a surprise and in some ways I am surprised to find myself taking it up. Perhaps there is a tad of hubris in accepting something like this that has come my way so late in the game.

As with all moments of parting, these are bittersweet days. What makes them sweet is my growing excitement for what lies ahead, what makes them bitter is the business of leaving a place and a country where we have lived so much of our lives, and where we have been fulfilled and edified. What makes them worse is that I will be apart from my beloved wife for three months, something to which I am not looking forward.

Each day I say goodbye to someone or something that has been important in my life. I know when saying farewell to some that it is unlikely we will meet again on this earthly shore. One thing of which this experience convinces me is that the Gospel is far, far more about eternity and unseen than we in the earth-bound West tend to make it. We would do well to redress this balance.

These have been profitable years, although not without pain and anguish -- but that is always the case with the vocation of ministry. The call which came so long ago to work within the Episcopal Church was unmistakable, and we believed then that God had it in mind for us to play a tiny role as his Spirit's renewed North American Anglicanism. Throughout most of our time here we worked hard in the hope that this vision would one day become a reality. In the midst of the present turmoil I find myself wondering how much of this dream was rooted in wishful thinking rather than realizable fact.

This is not to say that nothing has happened. During these last three decades we have seen a burgeoning of the missionary vision of orthodox Christians within the Anglican tradition here, and were privileged in various ways to play a small part in re-establishing this vital element of what it means to be a faithful witnessing church. Given the nature of the Episcopal Church, this is no small advance, and I suspect that as North American Anglicanism is forced painfully to reconfigure itself, this willingness to exercise a missionary vision alongside the outreach of a global Communion, will become one of the defining characteristic of whatever freshly emerging Anglicanism looks like. If it does not, then it is doomed before it begins.

We have also during these years seen a steady increase in the number of those, lay and ordained, who have a confidence in the faith as it is revealed in Scripture. Year after year there has been that gentle flow of men and women who sense a call of God to leadership, and who also are prepared for their lives to be honed and shaped by the vision that God makes plain in the Word written as they take up their cross daily to follow the one whose death upon the Cross was their means of salvation and eternal redemption. This is a long way from the carriage trade image of the church to which I came in the mid-1970s.

I had thought that we were coming here to play our part in the renewal of the denomination in which we have served, but in recent years I have had to do a lot of pondering and rethinking. As Paul wrote that "we have this treasure in earthen vessels" (2 Corinthians 4:7), the organizational vessel in which God's treasure is contained is ultimately replaceable, and I suspect that if we could see time from the end to the beginning rather than the other way round, we would have a much better idea of what is going on in the midst of today's confusion.

Out of my introspection on this issue I have come to the conclusion that while the church as an organism that has organization, the Gospel is ultimately a great deal more about the Kingdom than it is about the institution. I confess that there have been times when my love for the institution has gotten in the way of my passion for the Kingdom, and in some respects these recent years have been a radical corrective for me.

I came to realize some time before that fateful General Convention of 2003 that re-formation requires revised structures and we were probably the generation who would live through the early stages of remaking of those structures. Reading between the lines of histories of the Reformation era, I realize that those exciting days of the 16th Century were perhaps every bit as nail-biting as the period through which we are now passing. Reformation then did not happen overnight, and we should not expect the same. Luther may have set the fire of reform in October 1517, but it wasn't until the 1540s that the actual new shape of the Reformation and the Catholic churches began gingerly to emerge.

I take many riches from these years in the USA. One is a far deeper respect for the genius of Anglicanism, while another is a more robust ecclesiology that is much more catholic in many ways. Strangely, this puts me in a place where I am at odds with many with whom I have journeyed during these years, because I have yet to be convinced that attaching to other Anglican provinces and entities is necessarily the right way to go. While I deplore error and have little desire for companionship with it, I also hope that I know my own soul just a little and recognize that in my sinfulness I am capable of creating something that is every bit as inadequate as the fallen and straying church of which I am part.

As an evangelical and catholic Christian, fragmentation does not seem the right way forward, but I am not sure what actually is appropriate. I guess that for me that jury is still out on what is happening. This is a time, perhaps, when we need to combine those biblical values of faithfulness and patience, prayerfully waiting to see where God might guide us -- and guide us he certainly will.

However, fragmentation has taken place, which means one of the major tasks ahead of American Anglicans is to find ways of putting the pieces back together in some coherent form. I suspect that this will be about as easy as returning the contents to Pandora's box and then closing the lid. When there is a multiplication of jurisdictions and bishops, each with ego needs and turf issues, it is clear that all the seeds of significant tension have been sown. Ultimately one has to wonder what damage this does to Gospel ministry, much as those of us who remain in the Episcopal Church wrestle with the damage done by the theological and ethical faithlessness of the denomination.

One of the great blessings I have gained from my years in the Episcopal Church is that I leave these shores with a far deeper appreciation of the liturgical strengths of our tradition. I arrived just as the present Prayer Book was being brought in for trial use prior to final acceptance in 1979. There is much in the 1979 book that I really appreciate, but having said that hardly a day passes when I have not been deeply conscious of the book's significant theological shortcomings, I have wished that in some way these could be straightened out, but looking at the trajectory liturgical revision has been taking I knew that such a thing would never happen.

However despite this, over these years I have transitioned from tacit acceptance of liturgical worship to a deep love of the liturgy. I have visited a lot of Episcopal parishes over the years and seldom have I seen worship conducted in a manner that is either tacky or lacking in reverence. This may seem a strange thing for a priest to say, but the English Evangelical Anglican nexus in which I was formed tended toward ambivalence about the liturgical tradition. The liturgy sometimes seemed to be considered an unfortunate necessity pressed upon us by the church, rather than the vehicle whereby the People of God enter the presence of God.

There were good reasons for this. Evangelicals recognize the need to be able to reach beyond the walls of the church with the Gospel, and therefore did not want anything, including our patterns of worship to be the stumbling block to the outsider coming in to see if he or she could discover (or be discovered by) God. However, within the tradition there is this tendency to fall over backwards and abandon (or nearly abandon) our liturgical rootedness altogether. My American years have helped correct this imbalance, and I suspect that as I return as an Episcopal priest to the life of the Church of England, liturgical casualness among my fellow-evangelicals could well be a point of irritation.

I have also become much more sacramental. I was formed to believe in the power of the Word, so wouldn't have minded if we had had Communion just once a month. I am now grateful that the norm is to gather around both Word and Table each Sunday, the one preparing for the other, and the other reinforcing the one. Some years ago I went to be with a former Southern Baptist on his first Sunday in his Episcopal parish. I was looking forward to sitting at his feet as he opened Scripture - and to this day I remember the text: Romans chapter 7! However, it was not his preaching that left the most indelible impression that morning, but the humble reverence with which he presided at the Eucharist. The pre-America me would never have been able to admit such a thing.

But the shortcomings of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer point up what I believe is American Anglicanism's greatest weakness -- its theological vapidity. I am not an Anglican because of the lovely worship or our sacramental life, or any of the various pieces of adiaphora that so many of us enjoy. I am first and foremost an Anglican because of its doctrinal and theological tradition.

I don't know how many times I have heard it said outright or implied in my years here that theology doesn't really matter or Anglicanism is not confessional. I'm sorry, that is just plain wrong: Anglicanism from the 16th Century onward has taken doctrine seriously and is has always had a strong confessional tone. Because so many have come to believe this flaccid approach to theology and the revealed truth, in recent years we have been reaping the whirlwind of the wind that for several generations has been being sown. I think this has been one of my greatest causes of grief.

What startled me when I first came here was that I was pilloried by some because of my theology, and then immediately judged not on the basis of what I believed but on my stance in relation to what was the issue du jour. In those days it was women's ordination, which most of the time was approached not as the theological issue that it truly is, but as an issue of human right. Very early on I realized that not only did many leaders not really know the Scriptures very well, or be particularly interested in growing in their Scriptures, but they did not see that as a problem. Added to that was a very limited understanding of those generations of Christian shoulders on which we as people of this time stand.

It was when I started traveling around the church that I got to visit the seminaries that I started to discover how they functioned and what they perceived their role to be. Also, for a decade I happened to be officed in a seminaries so could see what happened there first hand. Gradually it dawned on me that my understanding of the nature of theological education was not what was going on in most of these places. There was little laying a firm foundation in Scripture, classic theology, philosophy, church history, and so forth, thereby equipping the next generation of ordained leaders for pastoral and missional ministry, but was more about propagandizing the student body into seeing life, ministry, and God in a particular culturally-conditioned kind of way.

In these seminary settings some students rebel, a few are capable of cutting their theological and intellectual teeth in a constructive manner, but significant numbers swallowed the bait hook, line, and sinker, and in the process often seemed to lose their first rich passionate love of the Lord Jesus Christ. A significant element of this prevailing seminary process is that it is predicated upon a hermeneutic of suspicion when handling the Scriptures, coupled with a sense of disdain for the wisdom of those who have journeyed the Christian way before us, and the notion that we now know better. When coupled with the desperate shortcomings of the Commission on Ministry system in most dioceses it is not difficult to see why leaders cannot lead, and the faith is not growing and blossoming as it ought.

Today's theological confusion is the end product of decades of such conditioning. Perhaps the classic example of our church's theological vacuity was the statement that came out of the House of Bishops in March: a mishmash of inadequate theology coupled with such a spin being put on history that the facts could not sustain. It was a classic example of wanting things to go a particular way, and so tinkering with events, movements, and theology so that it was possible to justify what was desired by the majority.

Theology is not meant for this. Theology begins with God. Theology for us starts with worship of this omnipotent God. Theology goes awry if we do not set out by prostrating ourselves before the living God in awe at his glory, grieving because of our sin, amazed at his grace, and willing to give our all to serve him. Theology begins, like prayer, in the heart of God, and the Lord Almighty then seeks by his love to form us into the people that he yearns for us to be. Theology requires that we work hard to engage God's self and God's revelation with the minds that have been given to us.

Yes, we should read, discuss, debate, perhaps even disagree, but in the presence of God and for the good of the church, not because we are cherishing a certain issue or agenda. It is a long time since such an approach to theology has prevailed in North American Anglicanism. My prayer is not only that the Episcopal Church and the rest of North American Anglicanism allows itself to rediscover God's glory, but that we allow ourselves to be rediscovered by this God of glory.

It is true that God's call is taking me across the ocean to live, but I will not be permanently gone. Ministry and family will bring me back, and I remain a priest canonically resident in the Diocese of Tennessee. There is much about America that I will be desperately homesick for, and there are friendships and attitudes that I am sure I will crave. However, God calls and we must follow -- which is what I am trying to do. I expect when I next put fingers to keys and add something afresh to this blog that I will be in Cambridge, the new kid on the block at Ridley Hall, someone learning afresh the survival skills necessary in the oh so different country from the one that we left thirty-0ne years ago.

The Anguish That Accompanies Moving

At my age I should really know better...

In just over a week from now I will be repeating in reverse the journey that we as a family took thirty-one years ago -- a half a lifetime away for me. That is, I will be moving back across the Atlantic Ocean to the new ministry that God has in mind for us in Cambridge, England. There is a deep confidence that we are following the Lord's leading and doing his will, but the same pain of letting go of where I am has returned. I had not really expected this.

While I was working hard in the parish, and even in the first week since I finished my pastoral duties, my emotions remained amazingly placid, but in these last few days as the clock ticks, as realtors swarm over the house, as we are warned that we are being caught in the credit crunch when it comes to selling our home, as I seek to get plans in order on the other side of the water, and so on, and so on, I find myself subject to occasional emotional meltdowns.

Do I really want to do this, I find myself asking, and my head says one thing while portions of my heart say something else. Certainly, because it demands that my wife and I live apart on either side of that vast expanse of water for several months, I am not looking forward to the separation one little bit.

"This is much too difficult," I complain, especially when in addition to all else I, in effect, see myself letting go of the stuff that has surrounded me and comforted me for these many years. But I need to gird myself up because part of this exercise is discovering just how much I have been possessed by my possessions, and now must deliberately let them go. In a way my system is being flushed out, but like an enema, there is no reason I should enjoy it!

Moving is almost always a foretaste of hell, but moving back across the Ocean has miseries that are unique. Among them are the dreams and nightmares that I have been living through during the hours of darkness. I hardly remember the content of the ones that assailed me last night, but my consciousness is still living with the feelings that have stuck to everything like so much mud and debris after I woke up and lay trying to work out whether it was the dreams or my sweaty tossing body which were the genuine reality.

It is ironic that when we left England in 1976 the landscape was brown and parched as a result of a long, hot summer, and one of the severest droughts then on record. While the Midwest struggles with too much water, we in the Midsouth are living with endless days of searing heat, 100 degree temperatures, and weeks and weeks since we saw even the whisper of rain. The landscape here is brown and parched, too, and as I look out of the window at the results of the endless sunshine that is how my heart feels.

I thought that I would make this hop across the Pond with ease, but that is far from the case. I am looking forward to the new challenges awaiting me at Ridley Hall, but my psyche has caught up with me and is reminding me that whenever we follow God's dream for our lives we are not necessarily going to experience all sweetness and light. Grieving for and letting go of what has been is part of the process of moving forward into God's providence for the rest of our days.

While it is exciting that at this stage in my life God should entrust to me a challenge that a person half my age would relish, I had under-estimated the angst that accompanies the letting go of the old in order to move forward to the new. I am glad that my latter years will be spent fruitfully in the service of the One who has redeemed me, but I have been as conditioned as anyone else in this cosseted age to believe that the Almighty will dish up life for me sugar-coated and drenched in honey.

While digging around in the attic yesterday and packing endless boxes I came across a little book of Victorian devotions and spiritual bon mots. This morning while doing my devotions I treated myself to a few minutes in its pages. Some of the little sayings and texts made me shudder, I have to confess, but others are helpful, bolstering me up in times like these.

For example, Isaac Pennington (whoever he was) wrote, "Prize inward exercises, griefs, and troubles; and let faith and patience have their perfect work in them." Another was by M. De Molinos, who said "Thou art never at any time nearer to God than when under tribulation; which He permits for the purification and beautifying of thy soul."

On the same page is this quote from Scripture, "Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer: ...ye shall have tribulation ten days: be thou faithful until death, and I will give thee a crown of life" (Rev. 2:10).

I guess that is what sums the turmoils of this life up and puts them in perspective. We go through none of this for personal aggrandizement, but because we are seeking to be faithful servants of the living God. Faithfulness is the name of the game, whatever the challenges that are before us.

Flock of Dodos

While we are working like slaves to get our house ready to put on the market, this is supposedly my vacation! So the other morning when I was exercising and ran across an interesting documentary on the television called Flock of Dodos, I felt no guilt about sitting down for a couple of hours and watching it.

This movie was an attempt to talk to both evolutionists and intelligent designers to get a clear picture of what the conflict is between these two ways of perceiving the origins of the created world.

It was put together in an engaging manner, and managed to talk at least somewhat seriously with everyone from the conservatives who used to be on the Kansas School Board, and who had opposed the teaching of evolution in the state's schools, to professors at the Ivies and beyond. What I appreciated was that although the narrator/interviewer, Randy Olson, was by training and inclination clearly an evolution activist, most of the time he managed to handle everyone appropriately and get them to present their position in a digestible and gracious manner.

However, every now and again interviewees got out of control and in those moments revealed their true colors. For example, there was a discussion between various professorial types who had been friends of Stephen Jay Gould, and during the conversation one of these gentlemen suddenly fulminated against the "ignorant yahoos" who could not see that evolutionary thinking was the only approach that held any water.

In that one moment he made it clear that he had absolutely no respect for those who asked questions of Darwinian orthodoxy, and the manner in which it has developed in the last 150 years. One of the basic principles of a serious intellectual discussion is having respect for those with whom you disagree.

As far as the evolutionists were concerned the bete noire was the Discovery Institute in Seattle, an outfit that I have visited and enjoyed several times. There are a lot of very bright folks associated with Discovery, and they have over the years put a lot of funds into advocating intelligent design, underwriting scholars and publications, etc., but Discovery refused to allow the filmmakers access or an interview. Not talking to your opponents is another way of blowing off where they are coming from.

This also made them seem much more sinister than they really are. Then when the figure of $5+ million was being thrown around as the annual budget of Discovery, it was made to seem that these folks were using money from conservative and reactionary deep pockets to buy a huge hearing for their cause. What the filmmakers didn't say was that Discovery's budget covers a lot more than just intelligent design, including, for example, issues to do with the environment in the Pacific Northwest.

As someone who does not have the problems with evolution that some other orthodox Christians do, as I watched Flock of Dodos I realized I was observing the dynamics more than the content because it is a fight in which I do not have a dog. I believe in an Intelligent Designer and while I can see the difficulties inherent in the more classic developments of the Darwinian thesis, do not find it hard to believe that the Designer used evolution to enable the creation to reach the point where it is today.

So, I found myself fascinated by the manner in which these two sides faced off against each other. What made it enthralling was that the dynamics were in many respects similar to those we see within the divides of North American Anglicanism. The truth is that with a few exceptions, there seemed to be little genuine engagement between the two sides of the debate.

On the one hand the evolutionists, as the "ignorant yahoos" comment suggests, had little patience for the scholarship of the intelligent designers, a good number of whom were not trained biologists but came from other disciplines and used the intellectual tools developed in those disciplines to look for the inconsistencies in the generally accepted evolutionary models. Perhaps the evolutionists were right, but their unwillingness to take seriously the positions of their opponents was itself shortsighted.

This is precisely what we see in the church fights going on. We are now at a point where there is virtually no genuine intellectual engagement between those opposed to one another happens, and it is clear from the manner in which we treat one another that there is little respect for the positions of those who disagree with us. There is a strong bias in the Episcopal Church. I have spent a lot of my life over the last thirty years being dismissed as an uneducated and narrow-minded theological wacko, an "ignorant yahoo," as it were, not because I necessarily am, but because I bring to the table presuppositions that are not respected by those who use this language of me. The result is that I am dismissed as irrelevant.

Both sides are guilty of such a thing because in the church context those on the right sometimes function as if those who disagree with them are not just wrong, but are dead wrong, and because they won't listen to what is being said to them are beyond the pale. So, with ears closed and megaphones in hand we scream our propaganda at each other, rather like evolutionists and intelligent designers, and there is never a meeting of minds from which something substantial and creative might possibly come.

But more than that. By not engaging one another it is as if we are free then to dehumanize (even demonize) those who we are against. A good cartoon takes certain characteristics of an individual and exaggerates them. This is what happens in much of our characterization of those with whom we disagree in the church conflict. In the process in our minds they cease to be the people they really are but a misrepresentation of that reality. Once we have set someone up like this, then it is easy to knock them down or to put ourselves in a position where we do not have
to have a serious relationship with them.

When we create such circumstances of non-relationship then there is no way of any kind through any impasse except conflict. The conflict we are experiencing has turned into civil war, and as history shows, whether it be the war between the American States or the battles in the former Yugoslavia, civil wars or often the most hostile, bloody, and damaging, leaving the most lasting scars. The question we should also be asking, too, is whether they glorify Christ.

As I watched Olson's representation of the evolution debate it was clear that these kind of dynamics were not only at play, but they were preventing either group from finding a way forward in any kind of relationship with the other. With but a few exceptions each side ridiculed the position of the other.

I was reminded of Francis Bacon's comment in his Essay on Truth, "'What is truth?' said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer."

Bacon goes on to talk about the giddiness of fixing a belief but not allowing discussion of the intellectual questioning of that belief. This, I think, is how battlelines get drawn up, shooting begins, homes are burned to the ground, much blood gets shed, and many lives are hurt. Those of us who are pastors are living with that hurt and its long-term consequences.

Whenever notions like these are raised there is an immediate outcry that the one presenting them is soft, flaccid, a theological and ideological wimp, or worse, a turncoat. Sometimes this may be so, but often it is an individual suggesting that ortho-doxy must be married to ortho-praxy. That is, true believing and true acting go hand-in-hand with one another. Grace and Truth belong together, but in the fight that is destroying the church today either one or the other tends to be the victim of all the combatants.

Somehow or other, and before it is too late, we need to get beyond this stand off, but, alas, I do not see anyone with the courage, the position, or the ability to do so.

Ecclesiastical Courts and Universal Fallenness

During the last couple of days I have been following the responses to the reporting of the ecclesiastical trial of a priest in Colorado who has been accused of the misuse of more than $400,000 of funds. It is not so much the details of this tragic case that I want to focus on, however, but the way people have greeted the guilty verdicts of the church court.

Reading the responses to the story on two conservative blogs, Stand Firm and TitusOneNine, I found myself getting both uncomfortable and irritated. What makes me uncomfortable is the notion that the diocese brought charges against this priest in order to destroy him and his credibility. While I suspect antagonisms, to suggest such a thing is a very dangerous supposition.

Many of the responses have, in effect, said that despite the fact that this man has been found guilty, because the panel is predominantly of a revisionist/progressive mind, then their minds were so twisted that they could only interpret the facts negatively as far as the defendant is concerned. These responses have been based upon little more than a cursory grasp of the facts, whereas we have been led to believe that the diocese has worked with the best figures accountants have been able to compile.

I know no more the rights and wrongs than anyone else who reads the media so cannot come to any firm conclusions, although a reliable and respected person close to the case has told me that these were certainly not trumped up charges. We must accept a strong possibility that this ecclesiastical action will be followed by state and federal investigations, and possible actions about which we must just wait and see.

I want to plead with folks always to be more thoughtful before they rush to judgment. It may be natural to want to smear the motivation of those who oppose us, or whose ideology and beliefs are at odds with our own, but is this a worthy way of proceeding? Just because we believe people are deeply in error in one area, it is illogical to assume that they are going to be incapable of seeing facts clearly in other areas.

While I have experienced misrepresentation and have seen much misrepresentation in the church, I have never in 30+ years as a priest of the Episcopal Church seen anything on the scale that is being implied by respondents here. From all I know it appears that the Diocese of Colorado is seeking to get to the bottom of this apparent mishandling of money because it has grave fiduciary responsibilities.

What those making the accusations seem unwilling to accept is that the outcome of the court makes it increasingly likely that the priest actually did commit what he is accused of doing. Just because his theology is sound when compared to the belief systems of those adjudicating the business does not mean that he is not prone like all of the rest of us to give way to temptation and fall into sin.

This is the point that I was wanting to get to.

I am anxious about the attitudes of the respondents because they seem to be working under the illusion that just possessing an adequate theology trumps the universal curse of fallenness. I sense that both the left and the right of the wider conflict are working with a deeply flawed understanding of the pervasiveness and power of sin to draw us from the Lord we claim to serve. Even the best theologies in the world are incapable of saving us from sin's power if we are not able to say to our temptations, "Get behind me, Satan!"